Share this:

The Washington Post has an article about local militias in Mexico which are beating back drug cartels when the government doesn’t seem interested in it. The citizenry began their operations with sling shots, machetes and old hunting rifles, but they’re arming themselves more appropriately with the weapons that they take from from the cartels;

“We are coming together with only one thing in mind: Kill or be killed,” said the doctor, JoséManuel Mireles, 55, who described what is happening as an armed social movement and estimated that thousands of citizen-fighters are pursuing the gangsters into the hills. “The only training we have is the courage we have inside.”

The rise of the self-defense movement in Michoacan is a desperate reaction to an increasingly oppressive drug cartel and to the security vacuum created as [President] Peña Nieto took office last year seeking to avoid a direct confrontation with the cartels.

As with everything that seems to work effectively, the government is trying to disarm the militia groups;

In Tepalcatepec, a core group formed that included many cattle raisers angry that the cartel was about to take over their association’s governing board. They decided to make their stand at the semiannual association meeting.

“When those criminals climbed onto the stage, we said, ‘How is this possible? We are many, and they are so few,’?” Reyes said.

Hidden shotguns and even machetes came out, and the crowd swarmed 15 men whom they recognized as gang members. Amid clashes over the next hours and days, locals detained many more, handing them over to the state prosecutor in the town of Apatzingan, a cartel stronghold.

After 12 hours, however, the prisoners were released.

Since then, Mireles said, “we decided not to detain anyone anymore.”

That’s probably a lesson we should apply to our Guantanamo experience.

@The Dead Man, “Magnificent Seven” was based on Kurosawa’s film ‘Seven Samurai’.

And I do see this happening some day in the future, when people get fed up with inept, incompetent police who can’t shoot straight, arrest the wrong people, and strut around in castoff military gear and vehicles.

So Mexican people are revolting against the drug cartels that B. Hussein 0bama & Co. armed as best they could with AK’s via “Fast & Furious”! OOOooh, [wannabe] Emperor Hussei ain’t gonna like that, HAHAHA…

It has been said by people smarter than me that Mexico has the resources to be one of the wealthiest countries in the world THe USA serves as an outlet for many of their discontented people. They need to return home ,stand their ruling class against a wall and shoot them,and slaughter the cartels and their families

Mexico is a perplexing country. I have only scratched the surface of it’s culture and history but I have a theory why it is the way it is.
Unlike the US Mexico’s population is 80% indigenous. Prior to the Spanish arriving the native people had a strict social caste. A very small percentage of the population held true power, most were considered as a simple labor source. The Spanish simply filled the upper caste. There was never any true broad based movement to establish a middle class or individual rights. Its all about getting your piece of the pie, and after the powers that be grab their share there isn’t anything but crumbs left for the average Mexicano. There is no trust at all in the government and little hope to get ahead.

The nastiest insult I was ever taught in Spanish was ‘gachupin’, which means ‘colonialist’. The person who told me that also told me that the Spaniards — in her words — come over to Mexico and breed with the locals, because they think it improves them, and then call them half-browners.

The insults and slurs she told me about make the Afro whines about racism look downright whiny.

Get On Board

Enter your email address below to receive updates each time we publish new content.

Privacy guaranteed. We never share your info.

About thisainthell

We are all military combat veterans and we write primarily from that perspective. Everyone who writes here has a Combat Infantry Badge, a Combat Medic Badge, a Combat Action Badge or a Combat Action Ribbon. We write about issues that matter to combat veterans..read more »